Re: The "best" Rails IDE for Windows

I have am also involved in the BETA test for the Aptana Cloud which will soon support Rails which is TOTALLY AWESOME!

It's not just a windows IDE either it's a stand alone JAVA app (Used to be an eclipse plug in).

Johnson - What Windows editor would you suggest then?

Last edited by jamesw (2008-06-08 10:24:52)

What you want and what you need are too often not the same thing!When your head is hurting from trying to solve a problem, stop standing on it. When you are the right way up you will see the problem differently and you just might find the solution.(Quote by me 15th July 2009)

Re: The "best" Rails IDE for Windows

Loading Aptana can take a while but once it is up I must say that I only have the very occasional performance issue but your point about rails running faster on a Mac is a little disturbing.

Are you saying that a hosted site developed in rails will perform at a noticeably improved rate when accessd by a Mac or is this just a development environment issue?

What you want and what you need are too often not the same thing!When your head is hurting from trying to solve a problem, stop standing on it. When you are the right way up you will see the problem differently and you just might find the solution.(Quote by me 15th July 2009)

Re: The "best" Rails IDE for Windows

Hi there,

Just read through this article with interest. I have downloaded Aptana and it looks great The only problem am I having at the moment is that I can't install the restful authentication plugin. Other plugins install fine, but not this one Very new to RoR's so perhaps I am doing something wrong. I have gone through the screencast and done all the install steps. Looks really great, but without the ability to install the restful authentication plugin I can't move my project over to my laptop So, for now I am stuck with Linux and vi, which is ok, but not the best, obviously.

Re: The "best" Rails IDE for Windows

DaveInFL wrote:

tildenm, you are using the RadRails plugin for Eclipse ? If that's working for you then perhaps I will give that a try then.

Just tried again and it worked fine. It does say "removing: C:/dev/workspace/Test/vendor/plugins/restful-authentication/.git", but continues to install and gives the whole test file. Do you have Msysgit installed (http://code.google.com/p/msysgit/downloads/list) with the "Run Git from Windows command Prompt" option?

Re: The "best" Rails IDE for Windows

Not wishing to stray too far off topic, or to spark a religious war, but...

I've been a PC user since the days of MS-DOS! Lately I've been developing Rails apps on a PC using Aptana. But watching Ryan Bates' Railcasts piqued my interest in TextMate, so I downloaded the Peepcode tutorial, and then purchased TextMate for a cheap old iBook that I bought for $250 to test browser compatibility.

After just a couple of days, I'm a convert. You see, Rails programming is about PRODUCTIVITY, FUN, and BEAUTY, and TextMate enhances all three in a really, really, big way. It's also WAY faster than Aptana, adding further to the productivity and fun aspects. Heck, it's so fast and efficient, you could probably make an economic argument that it would pay for itself on the next project!

I feel compelled to add to this thread the suggestion to watch the Railscasts and the Peepcode Textmate tutorial to see this tool in action, and then ask yourself the question: "Do I really want to stick with Windows when such a tool is available for the Mac?"

I also note that Obie Fernandez in "The Rails Way" mentions that "...to my knowledge most working Rails professionals develop and deploy on non-Microsoft platforms." You gotta ask yourself why that is so, and how it could be that the Mac evolved to dominate this development community, against all odds... it's because of TextMate!

Re: The "best" Rails IDE for Windows

I use aptana, I like that it does indentation automatically, and the fact you can format the source code easily fixing any indentation on pasted-in code... I don't know how people work with the 'lite' editors, you must do a lot of tabbing or have messy source. Netbeans was good too also does indentation, but I like that Aptana allows me to browse my file system and not just project files.

Re: The "best" Rails IDE for Windows

Re: The "best" Rails IDE for Windows

I don't know about "Best", but I have recently started using the Ruby In Steel Developers edition and find it to be an excellent choice. It isn't because I am an experienced Visual Studio developer, but the laptop I travel with is a relatively locked down enterprise laptop, so I couldn't install any virtual machines and run the Ubuntu image I run at home.

I also use RubyMine on my home system - and I find each IDE equally easy to use.

There are some niggles - possibly solved if I were to read documentation - but I can't get Require to work in the Ruby in Steel implementation. That will be the subject of another post though.

Re: The "best" Rails IDE for Windows

We are using NetBeans 6.5 for our rails projects, including www.ScrumPad.com. We tried the RadRails before this and NetBeans is really the better one.If you haven't tried NetBeans yet, I suggest you give it a try and I am pretty sure you will find this is the best IDE for rails so far for windows!

Re: The "best" Rails IDE for Windows

Re: The "best" Rails IDE for Windows

I went back and forth between Netbeans and Emacs. The "niceties" of Netbeans either really helped, or really got in the way. Emacs was simple and beautiful, but lacked some of the nice features that Netbeans provided.

I'm pretty convinced after 3 months of using it, that the best solution for Rails in Windows is to get a Mac.